Commonly, viscous materials, such as highly viscous varnishes/polymers for printing inks, and compacted materials, such as pigment flushings and paste wax compounds are stored and shipped in standard steel or fiberboard drums from which it is difficult to evacuate such materials.
It has been a known expedient to warm a drum having viscous contents, so as to cause the contents to become less viscous, before attempting to evacuate the contents by dumping or pumping. Also, it has been a known expedient to store and ship viscous materials in drums that have been lined with release-promoting agents, such as silicones or polytetrafluoroethylene, which facilitate dumping of such materials. These and other known expedients, however, have not been entirely satisfactory.
Because residues of such viscous vehicles can present environmental or disposal problems if left in such drums, whether such drums are to be then scrapped or reconditioned, and because such viscous vehicles can be quite expensive, it is important for users to evacuate as much as can be practically evacuated from such drums. Thus, it has been a practical necessity, heretofore, for users to resort to manual scraping and similar efforts to remove residues of such viscous materials from the bottom and cylindrical interior walls of such drums. Typically, and undesirably, users have to reach deeply into such drums in order to remove such residues.
Accordingly, there has been a need, to which this invention is addressed, for a better system for evacuating such viscous or compacted contents from a drum having a cylindrical wall of steel, fiberboard, or other material.